do what you say, say what you do
jaimezepeda said:
Wes,
Funny you should mention this. I posted the following not long ago:
http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=9040
It has taking me a couple of years to get used to "Give the customer as much quality as he/she is willing to pay for."
I first heard this quote where I now work. However, I have personally practiced this (without realizing it) for a very long time.
Thanks for bringing it up in this post. I am steadily growing more comfortable with the following:
Customers will only pay for as much quality as they are willing to have. Therefore, suppliers should build as much quality into a product as the customer is paying for.
Jaime
Not to be disagreeable, but I have been ever-increasingly against the phrase.
I suspect some differences might go away if we allowed the limited clear definition of quality to be ‘conformance to requirements.’
If we considered companies to be like individuals, what would we say about an individual whom promised something for money, then didn’t do it.
Possibly fraudulent, right? Even if it wasn’t the person’s fault, wouldn’t you expect him to do all he could to do it? At the very least it certainly IS a question of ethics, ethically when you pay a person to do something, you expect that person to do it.
If it’s an employee, you fire him (particularly if he does this regularly). Would you Not fire him because the person said??,
“ I didn’t do want was expected of me, because I wasn’t paid enough’. You wouldn’t buy that, would you???
Why do we want to give our companies a big break on this issue?
Companies that don’t do what they say they do are bad for society (tagushi loss) and can’t Possibly inspire enough consumer loyalty to stay in business. Your own job is on the line for that. Remember three business facts:
A CEO or other top individual can prosper by having trashed a company. He only has to grab big stock options, make promises he can’t keep, reap the small rise in stock price, and get out on a ‘golden parachute’. There livelihood is NOT on the line, yours is.
All companies keep prices to a minimum, if we wait for the bean counters to pronounce ‘there’s profit to spare’ and you will be waiting a long line.
Lastly and most personally, you and everything you do are that commitment to quality. Tell businesses in has to be in a high profit industry to afford you, and well their announce new cost savings (your job included).
No, the phrase is a threat not a fact of life. A defense from the constant erosion in price. If your prices go too low, there won’t be money for quality. This should be scary. No quality, no ethical meeting of the requirements you have, means no future.
There’s another quality phrase that’s much more powerful, and a better message to management. ‘Do what you say, say what you do’.
Granted there’s a lot of games and a little ambiguity about requirements. You can only be ethically bound to the requirements YOUR company makes. Meeting those requirements is the issue of quality we all need to be absolute about, the actual requirements and their fitness for the customer, those are issues of performance. Even issues of variability within the requirements ARE still not strictly (in this definition) Quality.
FOR, How can we be absolute about variability?? That would mean we would have to insist on the best processing that can be bought, which is ridiculous for some products. Buy poor processes and
you can still have good quality-how, by incessant inspection. Thus inefficient processes make quality Expensive.
You can argue or give way about reducing variation, or using a better component for longer life. You are not necessarily compromising quality (although you may be hurting profitability). Send stuff out that doesn’t meet your claims- your compromising quality, being unethical, and possibly fraudulent. You and your company will not survive that.
Enough of the soapbox.
Do those that are unswayed- when and whom would you say such a phrase to? Would you actually answer a corrective action with ‘insuffiicent resources to address’? What about products with high costs and low margins- are they immune from high quality requirements, because there is no money to make sure they are good?? What about bulk processes with millions of parts, even a high margin could get pretty small by the time you divide into each part? What about ISO requirements that the ISO 9001:2000 8.3 ‘organization shall ensure that product which does not conform to product requirements (my definition of product with low quality) is identified and controlled to prevent its unintended use or delivery.’ OR 8.5.2 ‘the organization shall take action to eliminate the cause of nonconformities…’ How do you tell an auditor that the product just isn’t expensive enough to warrant removing non-conforming product or doing corrective actions (OR doing them effectively, after all why do them, if you’re not actually trying to stop nonconforming product).
Good discussion, even if it is a little redundant. IMHO quality (doing what you say) is about right and wrong, not just $$$ and margins.